What's the deal?
by The HP and Twilight lover
Summary: If Sirius hadn't chickened out right in the middle of asking Remus out, and hadn't decided to invent a very creative excuse for what he'd said; we could all imagine where things would be going. But what if he did? The possibilities are endless… SLASH
1. Preface

Hi all! Summer's finally here, and YES I am aware that I haven't published any Sirius/Remus goddies in entirely too long a time! It's been awful being more busy during summer break than when in school, hardly getting any time to write at all! But now, to make up for it, I've taken the time to start working on - amongst several crappy all-dialogue oneshots - an actual _chapter fic_ for once - of course dedicated to the two pups we all love! :D Sadly this here is just the extremely short preface to it, but I will update it soon, I promise!

This work is production not only for the love I feel in general towards the RL/SB pairing, but also my love for all my fabulous readers and reviewers out there, and as this is an unfinished chapter-fic I hope you'll be happy to hear that I'll listen out for your opinions and ideas a lot more since they mean extra much to me this time! :) So, hopefully you will review and tell me what you're missing!

Disclaimer (of course): I still own no rights whatsoever to the Harry Potter series or the characters within it - though I do own the plot and that should count as something...

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_**What's the deal?**_

**Preface**

"You really do love him, don't you?"

The sweet, gentle and _caring_ voice of Lily Evans was rarely heard by any of the Marauders. Remus Lupin being the exception, of course. The two of them were good friends, even if they rarely met up of reasons not involving study. Right now, however, it seemed that Remus hardly wished for her company.

"I don't know what you're talking about", he murmured, shocked at hearing that she had possibly realised what he'd been trying to hide from everyone for so long. Everyone, including himself.

"Oh, don't you go there with me, Remus Lupin", she warned, firmly and softly at the same time. "You know very well what I'm talking about."

She took a seat next to Remus at the floor, where he'd positioned himself after running off from his place in the couch down in the common room; his place where Sirius had plumped down, his arm casually thrown across the lycanthrope's shoulders next to him only moments earlier. This was the first time Lily had stepped inside the boys' dorms, but she didn't have time to feel uncomfortable as she only focused on Remus right now.

"I'm talking about what Sirius did just now down there as he sat, laying his arm around you", Lily clarified as to make him talk.

"I-I don't mind", Remus lied weakly. "We're friends."

"You wouldn't have gotten up and away from there if you wouldn't have minded", Lily pointed out perceptively. "Because you're right: you _are_ friends.

"I have work to do, History of Magic", Remus mumbled denying.

Lily smiled weakly. "You're friends…" she continued, "but you're scared because you've realised you don't feel just friendly towards him when he touches you", she said insightful. "Because you love him."

Remus swallowed and sighed all at once, close to tears, and Lily spelled the door shut and cast a silencing spell towards it so that they wouldn't have unwanted eavesdroppers in this intense moment.

"Why am I always so _stupid_?" Remus let out in an upset whisper. "Why must I always complicate things? I don't- I don't want to love him, because there's no way he'll love me back. I don't… I don't deserve his love."

"Don't be like that, Remus; you know it isn't true, any of it", Lily said supportively, but Remus snorted doubtfully. "This isn't your fault, and as much as I don't understand what you see in him, I'm still convinced that you're wrong: I think he does feel the same about you-"

"Lily, stop it", Remus interrupted. "Really, it's not helping when I know you're saying this only to make me feel better."

"Remus Lupin, have you completely lost your faith and judgement of people? You know I'd do no such thing; I wouldn't tell you this if I didn't believe it to be true", Lily assured him. "But I see the way he looks at you; the way he smiles when he spots you walking towards him. And don't you dare go and say that you don't deserve it, because then I'm afraid I'll have to spell your mouth permanently shut!" Lily added, trying to awake some sort of amusement within her friend. "If anyone deserves to be loved and happy, then it's you."

Remus smiled slightly only to let her know that he was grateful for her words, however unreasonable he found them to be. Though he was still not fully happy; he would probably never be during his remaining time at Hogwarts or even after that. Because there was no denying it anymore: he had fallen for his best friend – fallen hard and landed flat and hard on his back. Fate apparently enjoyed being particularly cruel to him; making him not only a werewolf, but a gay, very miserably in love werewolf on top of that! He sniffed and sighed, hating to wallow in self-pity and trying desperately to pull himself together.

"Oh, Remus", Lily said pityingly while putting an arm around him to hold him comfortingly. "You know, this is exactly like when I told you I'd figured out that you were a werewolf", she reminded him: "You denied it at first, terrified that I'd judge you or tell people about it. But as you understood I'd do nothing of it, you allowed me to comfort and help you."

"I'm sorry Lily", Remus sighed remorsefully – albeit still very grateful for his friend's attempt at making him feel better – "but this time there's really nothing you can say or do to help me."

They sat in silence for a moment as Lily thought this over. Stubborn as she always was, she refused to just let it go.

"Maybe there is", she said thoughtfully.

Remus arched an eyebrow at her, not particularly hopeful but somewhat curious and slightly worried as he saw her grow more determined by the second.

"I still believe that he loves you back that way, Remus", she said with a certainty he had no energy to argue against. "And I'll help you with this; there's simply no way I'm leaving you to deal with this on your own, because I happen to know you that you just _won't_ deal with it at all."

"Lily…" he tried to interrupt her, but she ignored his attempt.

"Just bare with me for now, Remus", she asked of him. "Because in some way or another, I _will_ come up with some way of helping you", she solemnly swore.

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Okay, I know this is very short, but it's only the preface after all and things will actually _happen_ if you look out for the next chapter!

But still tell me what you think of it, and advices of what you think I should write in future chapters will be gladly welcomed, even though this'll turn in a completely different direction. ;p Thanks for reading!


	2. Worst ever dating deal

Okay, so here's the somewhat longer 1st chapter where the story really begins - and a fast update, like I told you! *smiles proudly*

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**1. Worst ever dating deal**

Sirius had really only been staring at the _fire_. He had been in the common room for about half an hour now, and even worse so; he'd gone half an hour with absolutely nothing to do but let his eyes wander. To stare at the fire in the fireplace; casting a warm glow around the room; radiating welcome, pleasant heat about. He had been staring at the way the flames danced about – he'd most definitely _not_ been using his spare half hour as gawking-at-wondrous-Remus-Lupin time.

The way the yellow, almost orange sun-set like shine engulfed the contours of said boy's almost copper-ish brown hair – just as much as it was bound to caress all of it at the back of his head as he was positioned right in between of Sirius' view of the fire – and the way it captured and framed the werewolf's face, and made parts of his pale skin seem on fire in a golden shade… well, these were things Sirius Black had certainly _not_ been noticing as he had in fact spent his time trying to see _past_ his friend and gaze at the _fire_.

To say he'd begun to doubt himself after the 29 minutes he'd been telling himself this, would undoubtedly be understatement. He'd of course known all along that his eyes very much enjoyed to be resting at the figure of the other Marauder – and having his heart make for a happy-dance inside his chest as soon as Remus would look up from that book he was currently engulfed in and cast an eye at him for a brief second… well, it was long since Sirius had found this strange. Now it was just natural; he'd gotten used to it by now. So used, in fact, that he no longer bothered to try and make it seem like he was _not_ inwardly drooling because of the eye-candy he was faced with.

This time, however, Sirius had been spending time thinking about other Remus-related things as well, while he'd been registering and memorizing every single movement his friend made. He'd in fact been imagining different ways of asking his Moony out. And while most of the scenarios featured him just pulling the lycanthrope straight into a session of mindless snogging right then and there, there were some rather nice dialogues he'd imagined as well. These were the one's he paid most attention to, as those involving tongue duelling – as pleasant as it was in Sirius' head – were most likely _bad_ ideas that would not end well once he would have to let Remus go.

Now, as tempting some of his ideas were to go through with – some of them were actually viable, even – he could not bring himself to act out on any of them quite yet. Merlin, what kind of gryffindor was he? The great Sirius Black, nervous and hesitating because he feared rejection. James would've mocked him for this if he'd known, undoubtedly.

x-x-x

It was lunch break, and they were in the dormitory. But this time, by 'they' Sirius did not refer to the four of them; all of the infamous Marauders. No, because it had certainly not went beyond his notice that James had interrupted their pleasurable prank-plotting plans to accompany Wormtail to the kitchens.

'They' were now a rather reduced number of people. To be precise, 'they' included none others than Remus and himself. And Remus was working on some essay in Ancient Runes, his head bent over his writings where he sat on the floor.

Which lead Sirius to notice what he guessed he should've noticed earlier: Remus had a very appealing neck. So appealing, in fact, that Sirius followed through with his impulse to touch it before he had even got around to register what was going on. Remus stiffened immediately. _Dang it. Think fast._

"Moony?" he said questioningly, wondering for himself just as the other bloke probably was, where this was going.

"Yes, Padfoot?" Remus asked, whirling around slowly as the black-haired friend of his let his hand drop.

"A curious thought just fluttered past my head", Sirius proclaimed babbling, trying to act as his normal self as he thought of what to say next.

"Is that so?" Remus wondered curiously. "And what about it, Siri?"

The corner of the animagus' lips twitched: He loved it when Remus called him Siri. And all of a sudden, it was perfectly clear to him what he would say; because, really, he wouldn't get an opportunity better than this, and he was no bloody wimp.

"I was just thinking, you know", he started, reprimanding himself of talking too fast and forcing himself to slow down before continuing, "… if you'd go with me to Hogsmeade this weekend?"

"Of course I will", Remus replied, but before Sirius got around to bounce with joy, he added; "don't we all always?"

Sirius nearly huffed out loud. His bubbling excitement had been knocked out of him just as fast as it had come. "Well, yes, but… I guess I kind of meant on a date."

Remus' slight smile of encouragement faded away immediately at those words, and he looked genuinely shocked, for the first time not trusting his werewolf ears.

"What?" he asked in a silent voice, staring wide-eyed at the other wizard.

Sirius had to cover things up quickly as to not scare the boy away. So much for not being a wimp.

"Because Lily made me a deal that she'd go with James if she knew you had someone to go with as well. Like on a double date", he said, but nearly bit his tongue off as he added that last part. Sure: it seemed more logical that Lily would ask for this, but it would be so much more complicated for Sirius seeing as he would now actually have to come up with something to convince the girl of all this, rather than just help James get a date with her.

"Oh, did she, really?" Remus asked, and Sirius was surprised to find that Remus seemed to have asked only to carry the conversation on; not as if he really doubted what had been said – which, in all honesty, Sirius had expected him to do – or even needed another confirmation. "And why would she explain this deal to you?" the werewolf continued, and this was the question Sirius had feared because he realised it made no sense at all. But somehow it seemed like Moony understood something that was beyond Sirius' knowledge, as if he'd already guessed the answer.

"I don't know", Sirius shrugged, and prayed to Merlin that Remus wouldn't question it. "But I figured it would be real great if I went with you … You know, because I really wouldn't want to miss out on anything when James finally gets his first date with Lily, and, well, since we know each other already and all that…" he hurriedly tried to explain.

"I… I see…" Remus nodded.

"Yeah and don't worry; it's not like we have to do a whole lot of obvious 'couple-things' anyway", the dog was quick to assure, in hopes of making his friend more comfortable with the idea. "People will probably not even notice that we're going out; the only ones who'll know will be Lily and James."

"Right…" the werewolf said hesitantly. "But what about… what about Peter?"

"Don't you worry about it", Sirius quickly caught on with it, and seeing as he'd made so much up already, he figured another white lie wouldn't do more or less. "He actually has a date."

"He does?" Remus asked in surprise. "With whom?"

"Ah, you know, that hufflepuff girl he talks about, what's-her-name…" the black-haired Marauder hastily made up.

"Marlene?" Remus suggested.

"Yeah, that's right, her", he agreed.

"Wow", the wolf said, still surprised as he hadn't heard anything about this from Peter himself.

"I guess stranger things could happen", Sirius commented with a shrug.

"Yeah, quite obviously…" the other sixth-year agreed pointedly.

There was a silence when Remus didn't continue and Sirius understood that he was thinking things over, but he also understood that this silence would soon be a very awkward one if it lasted much longer, and he needed an answer as soon as possible; the quicker the answer, the bigger a chance that it'd be a 'yes'.

"Look", he said in an attempt to convince the other boy, "all you have to do is tell Lily that we're going together; we don't really have to make an effort, because the important thing is really that we're all there, and I think Lily is in fact going to give James a chance for real; otherwise she wouldn't have agreed on this at all, right?"

"Right…" Remus said slowly, as if he actually saw some logic in this.

"And neither one of us would want to be the reason for James' nonexistent love life to remain nonexistent, now would we?" the animagus continued.

"No, of course not."

"Does that settle it, then?" Sirius wondered, anxiously and hopefully at the same time.

"Yes, I-I guess", the lycan said with a small nod and swallowed, hesitantly meeting the other boy's grey eyes. "Okay."

"Great!" Sirius smiled enthusiastically before catching himself doing so. "… James will be thrilled."

Remus was to go back to his work, but shot Sirius small, tentative glances rather frequently. Sirius registered merely half of them for once, as he was deep in thought of how in hell he would be able to make this work for him. He couldn't regret what he'd said but half-heartedly – still he cursed violently in his head at times for his stupidity. How in Merlins holy y-front pants would he ever deal with this? There _was_ no fucking deal!

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Da-da-Da-daam - a bit of action in this chapter! So whatcha say? Like it, hate it? Got any ideas on how this thing might develope? I'd really love it if you did! Review either way, though, and I'll try to update soon again! :D


	3. The plan

2. The plan

Sirius wasn't a man of thought. He was a man of action. That was probably why he still didn't know how to make things work when the other two Marauders had returned with plenty of food; not when their lunch brake had come to an end and it was time for their afternoon classes either; or even as he went through Herbology and Charms. All he knew was that he would definitely not have an easy time solving things.

As he'd sat up in the dormitory with Remus after their little conversation, trouble had found him already then. Remus had eventually finished his work about the time James and Peter arrived, and he had gotten the idea that they "might as well tell Lily straight away, then". This, Sirius had of course had to avert.

"Bad idea; she's busy", he had said almost too quickly. "She's in the library."

Sirius – as any Black – was good at lying; he was normally very inventive and almost as good at getting out of trouble as he was causing it. He also had the poker face that would make Lucius Malfoy jealous, and could look someone straight in the eye without telling off a thing of what he was thinking or feeling. But this didn't mean he liked lying – on the contrary, he quite hated it; especially if it was Remus he was to lie to. But this wasn't necessarily a lie. Lily was bound to be busy with schoolwork – seldom was she _not_. And if this was the case, then it'd be fully plausible for her to be in the library at this very instant. It wasn't _really_ a lie; more like a fair guess.

"She is?" Remus had questioned him, clearly confused as to how much Sirius seemed to know of the girl _he_ got along best with. "And how would you know?"

"Because that's were I bumped into her, and she told me of this deal", Sirius had replied. It was in rare moments like these that he was actually a really quick thinker – and sometimes it turned out good while sometimes it did not. He usually managed to pull something through, though. Not many had the time, energy or will to question Sirius Black for long.

Remus, however, unfortunately happened to be a very logic, attentive and in addition to that a very _patient_ person. Thus, he always picked up on things that didn't seem right, and unfortunately he often chose to point them out as well.

Right then he had raised an eyebrow at what Sirius had said. "You happened to randomly bump into her in _the_ _library_?" he asked, surprised more than sceptical since he'd found that he had no reason not to trust Sirius because he couldn't see that Sirius had any reason to lie.

"Yeah, I went there because I thought you might be there", Sirius explained almost too casually. "It was right after our last morning class; we'd had different classes", he clarified calmly.

"And you went looking for me? Could've just used the map or waited around in the common room", Remus had thought, but this didn't seem to be something he questioned or minded at all, really.

"Well, obviously we were reunited again, my friend", Sirius had smiled, and then he had proceeded to swiftly trail away from the whole Evans-subject and have him temporarily forget about it.

That had merely been about half an hour after he'd gotten Remus to join him to Hogsmeade. Sirius didn't want to think about what mess he could, and probably _would_, find himself in at the end of the day – or, hell, in the weekend if not sooner – if he didn't take swift, preventive measures.

He sighed as he got into Potions class and professor Slughorn presented the – to him, already familiar – Polyjuice Potion along with the Felix Felicis. He could sure use some lucky potion right now, but at least this meant he wouldn't need to pay strict attention to class.

He knew he had to focus on presenting this deal to Lily first, and deal with James later. Surely, his old fellow Prongs wouldn't cause any problems, but convincing Evans to go along without her finding out about Sirius' true feelings and go blab about it to one momentarily misled Remus Lupin, would certainly be troublesome enough!

The black-haired wizard glanced at said misled werewolf, who was currently acting as great a potions partner as ever in brewing whatever potion they'd been assigned to do all by himself – even though he must think something was seriously off with him – har, har – as Sirius had acted like quite the git in not even opening his mouth to say anything to his friend. All he had done so far this afternoon – dealing with the great distraction that was proper thinking – was trying to avert Remus' attention from Lily… you know, just in case.

Yet the werewolf never said anything about him not at all participating in the brewing of the potion, and it was not like Sirius was worried about the result anyway; Remus may not be a natural in potions the way Evans seemed to be, but he could do just as good as Sirius could when following the right instructions.

What _did_ worry the teenage animagus, however – aside from his newly gained, obvious problem – was the troubled look the lycanthrope's face, which Remus apparently thought no one even noticed. His face lit up and he smiled the tiniest of smiles when he realised he had managed the proper result with his – hrm, _their_ – brew, and Sirius looked at it only to discover that the content of this cauldron seemed identical to the content of Slughorn's own. Polyjuice Potion, then. Good thing he at least figured _that_ out, because it wasn't like he came any closer to a solution regarding his other… Wait a second…

For a brief moment, Sirius held his breath as he saw how this could work. He had formed innumerable good plans – real, brilliant _Master_ _Plans_ even; involving Snivellus, some of his own jinxes, the greatest of laughs though no punishment whatsoever – during his pranking days at Hogwarts, and he immediately recognised one – which meant that he was sad to say this wasn't a good plan of any sorts. But it was a plan nonetheless, and, for now, it was all he had to put his hopes to.

So as Remus poured a sample of their brew into a goblet he would hand in to the Potions Master, Sirius did exactly the same. Only, he had no intention of handing away his sample to anyone…

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Sorry for having you guys wait so long for an update! And sorry for merely putting up such a short chapter! But at least I took the time to update (even if my folks are currently pissed at me for sitting in front of the computer instead of cleaning!) and that counts as something, right? Hopefully I'll get the time to publish another chapter soon!

So, anyone's got any ideas of what Sirius is up to? *suggestive wink*


	4. Convincing redheads

Okay, so I have good news and bad news for you, dear readers! And seeing as I'm always starting with the good ones... here we finally go for an update! It's a longer (cheers :D) and more eventful chapter! Lean back and enjoy it people, and we'll take the bad news later on.

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**3. Convincing redheads**

Sirius had now learnt the hard way how very exhausting it could be to keep Remus and Lily from speaking to each other. There constantly seemed to be something Lily needed to hear Remus' opinion on, and that wouldn't do; because regardless of who of them who'd be initiating the meeting, the two of them talking could always lead to Remus bringing the forthcoming weekend's plans up – and until Sirius had gotten around to talk to Evans, that would be a positively disastrous thing.

But Sirius couldn't possibly let other people know he'd talk to Evans – heck, he didn't even plan on letting Lily herself know it either – so at the end of the day he had both good news and bad ones on his mind.

The good ones were that Sirius had managed to prevent the hazel-eyed werewolf and the redheaded witch from saying anything to each other, other than the formal greetings at dinner. However, the bad news were that he had yet to manage catching up with her in private. Ironically, once he really needed her in a remote corner of the library, Lily had for some strange reason decided to revise and finish all of her schoolwork right in the crowded common room. And apparently, she had lots of schoolwork.

Needless to say, Sirius didn't like this. He didn't like this one bit. Because before you knew it, it was bedtime, and everyone started to head up to their respective dormitories soon enough. Everyone, including the Marauders but excluding stubborn Lily Evans.

Oh, well. It looked like he would perhaps get his opportunity now, then. Probably a pretty bad one – in which he'd probably need to give up hours of sleep as well as be forced to face a sleepy, and undoubtedly somewhat snappy, Evans – but it was still an opportunity he couldn't afford missing.

And so, Sirius Black started to follow through with his plan.

_Step 1: Wait 'til everyone's gone to bed._

As all the sixth-year gryffindor boys were gathered in their dorm, James had gotten the idea to explore all the ladies' rooms of the school – yes, weird enough, but he claimed to have heard rumours of this 'Chamber of Secrets', and of course he wanted the Marauders to know everything about the castle (possibly adding it to the map) – and he immediately started plotting on when and how they would do this.

"But what if there are girls in there at the time?" James asked himself, though he said it out loud so that his fellow Marauders would be able to help him figure out an answer. "How do we distract them?"

Sirius gave a sigh and stood just to pull his shirt off and stand looking at the others. They had all seen him wearing less before – he always tended to sleep in nothing but his boxers in the summertime – yet two out of three of the other guys seemed slightly awkward by this. The third smiled mockingly while trying to frown, and said:

"You do realise that those girls could be far too young for that to work as a distraction, Padfoot?"

"Oh bugger off, Prongs", Sirius replied, James' smile mirrored in his face. "I'm going to bed", he then shocked everyone by proclaiming. Not that it wasn't late, but he was never the one to go to bed first.

"Are you sick?" James asked jokingly, though still wide-eyed.

"Nope, just tired", he assured seriously; because he knew that if he retorted with witty jokes himself, he wouldn't pull the tired-façade off without suspicions.

Luckily for him, Remus followed his example and changed to his bed time attire as well, and Peter was obviously never one to go counter current. This left James to be the last one up, and as he didn't see the point in staying up all by himself, soon all the sixteen-year-olds had climbed under their sheets.

_Step __2: Make sure no one will be awakened again._

When Sirius had laid silent, eyes closed and motionless in his bed for a while, he could hear snoring emerge from behind the curtains of two of the other beds, and once he listened carefully he could also discern the light, relaxed breathing indicating that Remus had also fallen asleep by then.

Sirius got to his feet slowly and silently, grabbed the goblet of Polyjuice Potion from his beside table – after lifting the Disillusionment Charm over it, of course – and then proceeded to cast silencing charms towards each of the three closed curtains.

_Step 3: Turn into James__._

The black-haired youth sneaked across the room – even though sneaking was in fact unnecessary at the moment, he enjoyed himself by raising the tension and hummed the team song of an action movie he'd seen when visiting Peter some time ago – and he carefully opened James' curtains and reached a hand towards his pillow to get hold of a stray of his messy-haired friend's hair.

He smiled in triumph as he dropped the hair into the potion and watched it turn a golden-brown colour, but that smile efficiently faded from his face only to be replaced with a grimace as he swallowed the first gulp of the liquid.

_Ugh_! He sure hoped that this would be worth it!

Moments later, another James Potter was standing almost naked beside the bed in which James the Original snoozed. Sirius inspected whichever body parts he was able to see to make sure he had actually changed, even if he suspected that things were still going according to the plan only by establishing that his hair had shortened a great deal and felt very messy as he pulled a hand through it.

Sirius reached for James' clothes – which said boy had just tossed onto the floor the way the dog animagus also did – and pulled them on quickly, knowing that his target of attention would react immediately and get rather suspicious if he didn't wear the prefect's badge that was attached to James' robe.

He went into the bathroom quickly to check how he looked, and once he'd seen James' reflection looking right back at him – kind of creepy – he left the his dormitory and headed downstairs, praying that Lily hadn't gone up to bed yet.

This seemed to be his lucky day – or night, rather. But now came the hard part:

_Step 4: Convince Evans to play along in this darn game. _

"Lily? Lily-flower?" he said, trying to imitate his best mate.

"Potter, I have enough to do right now without having you try to gain my attention", the redhead snapped right away. _Cranky when tired_, Sirius stated in his mind.

"You should go to bed", he commented. He only said this because he wanted to open up for a conversation, though; the last thing he wanted right now was for her to leave, and that was why he wouldn't have said it if he hadn't known for sure that she wouldn't follow his 'advice'.

Lily lifted her head to glare at him for a moment. "I. Can't", she hissed. "I've got things to do, which you would've noticed if you'd taken a second to look around before approaching me in the middle of the night."

"Ancient Runes", Sirius stated after recognising the book she was bent over as the one Remus had worked with earlier. "Too bad I don't take that subject." Not bad. It seemed a total bore. And he was lucky James didn't take it either. "Would've helped you if I could, you know." Yet another lie. But it seemed like something James would say to her.

Lily tore her gaze away from her book once more to look at him sceptically. "What are you even doing up at this hour, Potter?" she asked, seemingly uncaring. "I swear, if you tell me you just came to keep me company…!"

"I need to talk to you", Sirius admitted.

"The answer is no", she informed sharply.

"You don't even know what I was going to say yet", he protested.

"Oh!" she said, and eyebrow raised almost warningly. "So it didn't have anything to do with asking me out again?"

Sirius hesitated. "Well… that's only a part of it. And it's not the important thing here…"

"Forget it, Potter."

"Call me James, will you?" Lily rolled her eyes and went back to working on her essay. "And just listen to me. Please."

Sirius didn't usually use _that_ p-word, but it always seemed to work on Remus – especially in combination with his infamous puppy-dog-eyes – so he hoped for luck now as well.

The redheaded witch didn't look up at him again, but she stopped writing and held still in the position she was in, which was good enough for him.

"Okay, here's the deal", he said in a somewhat higher voice, to make sure that she'd get that he was serious (not to be taken literally this time, though) and that she'd hear him out: "Sirius and I had been going on about how Remus needed to get himself a girlfriend, again..." he lied, and apparently he did this well because he was already interrupted by a quite annoyed Lily Evans who snapped her head back up to look at him instantly.

"Seriously, you guys should just quit bugging him about this; it's none of your business and you're only making things worse by saying stuff like that to him!" she snarled intensively. "Believe me, he doesn't want a bloody _girlfriend_, so just do him and yourself a favour and stay out of it!"

"Geez, Ev- Lily!" Sirius exclaimed and raised his hands into the air in surrender, though Lily seemed unimpressed by this. "Chill, okay? I know we shouldn't talk like that, but anyway, that's not the point."

Actually, Sirius was pretty curious about the reasons behind Lily's livid reaction. But he knew just as well how he needed to leave this subject in order to have enough time to "break the news" and try to convince her. Thus, he carried on.

"Now for the interesting part", he said and leaned in slightly closer to her, surprised when she didn't move away. "I guess Rem got tired of us... fully understandable!" he added at the irritated glare she sent his way. "... And so he said that he'd ask someone out as soon as J- I took you on a date."

Lily looked straight at him, her green eyes shining brightly almost as if amazed over how wondrously thick he – James – seemed to be.

"He just wanted to make it clear that he had no intention of asking anyone out, stupid", she thought, and rolled her eyes at him. However, she still listened intently as he continued, secretly cursing the fact that she still hadn't come up with a way of getting Remus together with Sirius without simply telling the latter boy how Remus felt – which would be betraying the trust she knew that her friend put in her.

"Well, that was my initial reaction as well", Sirius continued, and Lily didn't look down at her pieces of parchment again. "But the way he looked at us, straight in the eyes... it was almost as if he dared us or something, like he made a deal. As if he already planned on asking someone out and was just looking for an excuse to do so", Sirius explained, but he instantly regretted the way he'd phrased it as he heard how that sounded far too much like him and not like Moony at all.

Surprisingly enough, Lily actually seemed to think his words through, as if they could somehow make sense to her. Sirius suddenly felt uneasy. What did she know about Remus that none of the Marauders knew? Was there actually someone he liked? But Evans had seemed very keen to let him believe otherwise just a minute ago.

"Who is this 'someone' you talk about?" Lily asked, and though Sirius Black was normally exceptionally good at reading people, this only made him all the more confused; because Lily both sounded and looked like she didn't even expect him to know the answer to this, almost as if she asked him merely to control the facts.

"I don't know", Sirius said, James' voice sounding like he was suddenly becoming introvert; as if trying to prepare to defend himself. "He wouldn't say."

That wasn't technically a lie, even though they hadn't really asked Remus about things like these for real. Lily nodded, seemingly to herself, as if all of this actually sounded sensible in her ears.

"But I was thinking... you know, he's seemed kind of... _sad_ lately", he continued, and this was in fact completely true, even though Remus had only appeared like something was bothering him when he thought no one noticed; but Sirius always noticed, even if he didn't understand the reason behind his beloved friend's bad mood. "I think going on a date with someone would perhaps cheer him up a bit."

The night seemed completely full of surprises; the redhead nodded once again, thoughtfully. Though all of a sudden she seemed to come together again, and her formerly quite glazed gaze went warning again, albeit half-heartedly.

"I'm guessing you've put even more thinking into this", she said, and for a split second it was almost as if a tiny, tiny part of her was amused.

Sirius nodded hopefully. "I have", he confirmed, "and though I'd really have liked our first date to have been in private, I thought we – the four of us, whoever this fourth person might be – could go on a double date; you know, to convince him we're actually going out as well. Because, I trust Remus always to stick to his words, but you know him too, Lils. Isn't it quite probable that he'd like to have heavy proof that we'd keep our part of the deal up as well, before he rushed into something?"

Sirius was very proud of how convincing he seemed now, even to himself, and Lily seemed to swallow the bait whole.

"Actually, that does seem quite likely", she admitted – not sounding half as reluctant as she'd probably like herself to. "Okay, so when do you plan to carry this out? I'm sure you have the date set already, isn't that so?" she said, almost smiling for a moment.

"I was thinking this weekend, since we're going to Hogsmeade and everything?" Sirius said, with just the right amount of skilfully toned hesitation for it to seem like a mere suggestion of which he was asking for her approval of. Of course, it simply wouldn't do if she'd refuse him now. "If you don't have plans already, that is", he added to seem like the perfect, considerate gentleman. James would've been proud.

"I guess that would work..." Lily admitted tentatively. "If and _only_ _if_ you make sure that Remus does his part until then. Though I'd be surprised if he actually did."

"No worries, I'll drop him some hints and help bring forward his gryffindor courage. It's somewhere down there alright, just waiting to surface", Sirius smiled, and he simply couldn't hide the affection he felt for the boy he was thinking and talking of.

Lily saw the earnestness of the emotion that reflected through his – James' – eyes, and this actually got to her right away. She looked upon the face she'd once thought was only displaying immaturity and too much self-esteem, and registered the fondness in surprised appreciation.

"In that case, I'll do it", she agreed honestly, then her eyes seemed to twinkle in a quite Marauder-like way as she added: "For Remus, so don't get your hopes all up the roof."

Sirius actually laughed _with_ Lily for once. "No worries, Lils: Saturday will be Remus' day", he assured, proud of having gotten away with calling her 'Lils' _twice_ now, whereas James normally never got to call her that. "I can take you out another time and focus entirely on making sure you have a nice time – even if you'll most certainly have a nice time this time as well, don't get me wrong", he smiled; not that overly-confident I'm-the-king-of-the-world smile of James', but the absolutely charming I'm-not-as-much-of-a-shallow-git-as-you-think smile that he pulled off all on his own.

Lily gave a small smile back at this while shaking her head with a sigh, not bothering to go down that usual road of denying him a date; after all, this was much of an unusual moment, and even though she was tired and she knew that he'd taken much of her time for work this night, she couldn't help but think that she'd perhaps been mistaken in judging James Potter as an immature idiot so quickly after all.

Sirius nodded one last time, trusting Lily to keep her word without needing to seal it with a spell – and furthermore trusting her to be quite offended if he'd suggest such a thing, anyway. So he got to his feet, flashing her a quick, pitying and apologetic look as he once again let his eyes drift to her unfinished essay for a moment, before turning around to head for the stairs with a short:

"Goodnight, Lily."

* * *

Okay, so how did that work out to ya? I kinda wanted Sirius to play the part of good, supporting friend here and not screw up James' chances of even getting to go on a date, so if someone finds that out of character I guess it's all right! :)

As for those bad news I was talking about... well, I'm going on vacation tomorrow (to Italy, my family do that pretty much every summer, so this'll be my forteenth time) and I'll be gone for about two weeks and a half WITH NO COMPUTER AVAILABLE TO EVEN CAST LONGING GLIMPSES AT! Which means, I'm very, very sorry to have to inform you guys that I won't be able to update this thing until July 26th, earliest! Sorry, you'll just have to be incredibly patient and nice, understanding readers who will not forget my story once it's finally being updated again, okay? Deal.

Also, I need help writing the actual dating chapter, if it comes down to that :P so anyone got any ideas on where they (the four of them) will go, or what they'll do? I'd very much apprechiate hints and advices and lots of opinions here, since I've never actually written a dating instalment before! Wish me good luck with that ;D Hopefully you'll review me as soon as you've read the chapter and tell me of ideas or just what you guys think, so that I'll be pleasantly surprised once I get home again, but I'm getting worried! Couldn't help but notice how I've recieved more than three times the alerts and favs than I have gotten reviews, which is kinda sad *pouts* as I know for a fact that quite a lot of readers are bound to have opinions about what they read...

Not that I tell you to stop adding this story o alerts (quite the contrary actually, it would probably be a good idea to do so considering the aforementioned bad news...) but I'd very much like it if you took the seconds of effort and dropped me a line on what you think, so that I know what you would want me to write and what I should improve... But I know also that I'm slightly the hypocrit as I've been unusually (terribly) bad at _replying_ to reviews. I'd want all of you out there to know how much I apprechiate that you're reading what I'm writing, and to my reviewers that I absolutely LOVE you guys for telling me in your own words what you think instead of having me guess! ILY all! :D


	5. Breaking the news

I'm back (obviously)! Missed me? Of course you have! Anyways, I'm hurrying to put this up since I've had you guys waiting for so long now, though I don't have a lot more than this written down although I have a couple of ideas for forthcoming chapters in my head... So it's not too late to hand me some helpful ideas of what you think should happen in future capters or at the date (which I'm prolonging even more now that I've gotten some various ideas from you readers that I would very much like to combine into one... Yeah, I know, how the hell is that gonna happen?) ;)

So without further ado...

* * *

**4. ****Breaking the news**

As Sirius sneaked upstairs he couldn't be happier with the way things had turned out. Checking his mental notes, all that was left to do now was to:

A: Break the news – or some of them, at least – to James. (_"Congratulations mate, I got you a date with the bird you've been chasing for a good third of your life!"_)

B: Hook Wormtail up with that Marlene-chick.

And C: Have Remus finally tell Lily they were going to accompany her and James in Hogsmeade.

However, it was the C-part that he was in all honesty rather worried about. Because as things had worked out, it had most definitely seemed like the green-eyed witch knew of someone Remus would possibly want to ask out for _real_. So how would she react when hearing from her friend that he'd be going out not only with a _guy_, but one of his _best_ _friends_, who also happened to be the infamous girls-magnet Sirius Black?

Now, it had indeed been quite a while since Sirius had lastly been seen snogging or chatting a girl up in public – he had quit playing the part of the overly-social womanizer as soon as he'd finally realised he actually didn't care much for them anymore, but that he was in fact a great deal head-over-heels with the very much masculine werewolf best friend of his. Ah, the irony!

Though he did not doubt that Lily still considered him the careless, unserious (funnily enough) bad boy he had once been. Kind of conservative, really, but he couldn't very well go and say that right to her face, could he?

He got inside his dorm and closed the door behind him, starting to undress while lifting the silencing charm that would undoubtedly cause quite the fuss in the morning if he'd just leave it like that now.

Though it turned out that he should probably have waited with doing so until he'd already gotten into bed again, because – due to his furry little problem – Remus was an easy sleeper whenever he wasn't hurt and completely exhausted, as was the case after transformations. And apparently the brief sound of Sirius' tapping footsteps against the wooden floor as he climbed out of his friend's pants and threw them where he'd retrieved them was enough to wake him.

"Sirius?" he murmured sleepily, startling the boy in question quite abruptly and made him freeze in his movements. "Is that you?"

Remus sounded more hesitant than ever at such a simple question. Probably because while he saw that the curtain to his right – normally circling Sirius' bed – was open to reveal the emptiness coming of his absence, his werewolf sight allowed him to distinguish the contours and contrasts of the person, and his sense of smell was strong enough to have him notice that something was definitely off – even though his werewolf hearing was arguing against this, also telling him that the figure in front of the door moved like Sirius; breathed like Sirius; was Sirius.

The black-haired wizard didn't know what to do. He couldn't say anything or come closer to Remus like he wanted, because – as it had gone so much smoother than he'd hoped to convince Lily – the effects of the Polyjuice Potion wouldn't wear off yet in about half an hour.

But then it hit him. Maybe he couldn't show himself in this body, but he had another one ready to use. Because even though the potion had made him look like James, he still hadn't turned into him mentally; therefore he still had his own skills, powers and tricks he could perform. Thus, he quickly turned into his dog shape and padded over to Remus' bed to jump up into.

"Padfoot?" Remus whispered in surprise. "What are doing up this late? Weren't you the one who said you wanted to go to sleep early, you mutt?" he asked, but could only hold so much seriousness as anyone could when talking to a dog. "Should've known you were up to something."

Despite his words of suspicion the brunette smiled tenderly and patted the dog softly; tracing his fingers mindlessly through the thick, black fur and sighing deeply; utterly relaxed and not bothering to push him out of the bed as the animal lay down halfway across his chest.

Padfoot licked Remus' hand affectionately and the werewolf laughed lightly, causing the dog to heave and lower in synch with his chest. The two closed their eyes simultaneously, both comfortably drifting into a peaceful sleep in next to no time.

The peace didn't last for long, though. As soon as Sirius woke up a couple of hours later, he heard that James was already up muttering things about how half of his school robe was missing. Black was then immediately on the alert and had to run off from the hand that was lazily stroking his dog head and jump out of bed while remaining as silent as possible.

He sneaked away to James' bed and hurriedly crawled under it while its usual occupant had his back against it. He lay flat on his back as he transformed back into his usual human self – mere inches of knocking his head against the frame as he did so. He then proceeded to struggle out of the pieces of clothing he wore on his upper body, which proved to be an extraordinarily difficult task when trapped under a bed; let alone when he was also putting a great deal of effort not to make any sound.

Though as James rummaged through his things, making increasingly more noise the longer he was looking, he hardly had eyes or ears for anything else and Sirius got away unnoticed as he pushed the clothes so that they were half-visible next to the pile of shoes, socks, pants and ties that were on the floor beside him. He transformed back into a dog so that he'd be able to come out from his hiding place without rising to his feet or having to crawl away slowly. He jumped up into his own bed before he transformed back once more, and was ever so grateful that his curtains – still open at Remus' side – cut him off from James' field of vision.

"Padfoot?" Remus whispered as he hurried to get under his sheet, and Sirius hushed at him and winked.

James seemed to have heard him though, and plopped into reality again as if the nickname had been a code word. He darted to his best mate's bed and ripped the curtains even further apart to make it clear that he wanted Sirius' attention.

"Sirius Black, where have my school robe from yesterday gone?" he asked quite pointedly.

Sirius chose to jokingly avoid the question. "I can't recall the time when I last saw a school robe go anywhere, Jamsie", Sirius informed him calmly. "They don't usually do that, you see."

"Oh, very funny", James said ironically with a very Remus-y roll of his eyes. "Where have you hidden it?"

"Now now, Prongs, remember the first Marauder rule: never make accusations on an empty stomach", Sirius reminded him strictly.

"Funny, I thought our first rule was: never pull the same prank thrice in one week", James said, efficiently distracted from the subject.

"That's interesting, because I never even knew we had any rules", Remus added to make his way into the conversation.

"Well, we have when it suits us, Moonshine", Sirius explained with another wink. "Now, how does my competition to the shower look today?"

He grinned at Remus, who returned the favour, and was about to race him to the shower when James got a hold of his arm and pulled him back.

"Not so fast, Black!" he exclaimed promptly. "Where is my school robe?"

"You're wearing half of it", Sirius stated cleverly.

"And where do you reckon the other half is occupied?" James clarified, frowning and grinning at the same time.

"I suppose it's where you last put it: at the floor, my dear friend."

"I've already checked", he pointed out tiredly.

"Well check again, then", Sirius suggested. "But now Moony beat me to the shower thanks to you, mate. Expect me to take out my revenge on you", he warned. "I do hope you're not going to shower today as well."

But of course, Sirius already knew that he was. The only one who wasn't was Peter, and so he and Remus were the first ones to be ready to head for the Great Hall. They waited however – even if Wormtail was never half as patient as Moony about anything; let alone food – but when Sirius had dried his hair and pulled clothes on James was still in the shower. This had of course been Sirius' plan exactly from the very beginning.

He planned on talking to James alone when informing him of the upcoming weekend's planned events. Thus, he told the other two that they could go ahead to breakfast; that he'd wait for James himself. Remus hesitated but Peter gladly accepted the offer and bolted down the stairs much faster than he was accustomed to, which left Remus to join him without much of a choice.

"Where did the others go?" James asked as he hurried out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel.

"I told them to go if they wanted to have any food at all before classes", Sirius teased; James always got stressed out when late to Transfigurations, but he wasn't in fact running particularly late at all. "I wanted them out of here so that I could be alone with you", he admitted.

James stopped in his tracks. "That sounds… disturbing", he said, and managed to pull up a face of faked worry. "Honestly Sirius, I don't blame you for fancying me but I'm afraid I cannot return your tender feelings", he joked, knowing full well of the direction in which Sirius' 'tender feelings' pointed.

"Oh, shove it you ponce, or else I might not hand you the good news!" he clarified, unable to wipe the excitement off his face.

"What good news?" James questioned with slight suspicion.

"I've hooked you up with Evans", he informed proudly. "You're going on a date with her in Hogsmeade this Saturday!"

James first seemed to think Sirius pulled some cruel morning prank on him, but then his eyes grew wider and wider with the realisation.

"Are you for real, mate?" he exclaimed even more excitedly. "How the hell did you manage that?"

"I have my ways, Prongs; Lily and I made a deal."

James got more wary in an instant. "Which was…?"

Sirius hesitated slightly. "Basically that she'd go out with you… if Remus went along with someone as well, like on a double date", Sirius explained, but hurriedly added: "But that's cool, because I've got that settled as well: he's going with me."

"Wow, he asked you?" James wondered, happy for his best friend as well as he was happy for himself.

Sirius hesitated again, knowing full well that his friend wouldn't be half as happy for him in a minute.

"… Well… I asked him", he admitted, now suddenly very hesitant to continue. "The thing is he thinks this whole thing was Lily's idea, while Lily believes it was his idea; only, she thinks you put him up to it", he explained in very broad outlines.

"Uh-oh", James sounded upon realisation and shook his head. "That should mean that it was actually _your_ idea, Pads."

"Yup", Sirius confessed, not finding any reason to hide it, "but they're all going along with it, so…"

"Hey, no offence mate, but I don't _want_ it to be your idea when Lily agrees to go out with me", James said quite bluntly.

"Don't worry about it, she likes you anyway", the other boy assured.

"Are you sure?"

"Positive", he promised. "Trust me, she was surprisingly easy to convince."

"Cool… but…" James seemed to think something was wrong still, and Sirius understood him completely. "Listen mate, I know how you feel about Remus since you told me and all, but… you know this is really not the proper way of getting on a date with him."

"Prongs, I know, I just…" Sirius sighed. "I want to go out with him, and if it goes well I'll just tell him all about how it really is, and we'll have a good couple of laughs about it."

"Okay, but… well, if he thinks that this is all Lily's idea, I trust you have arranged it so that he doesn't have a clue you actually like him, am I right?" James asked knowingly and slightly reproachful.

"Oh Prongs, you know me too well…" Sirius laughed, trying to bring out humour in it all but failing miserably.

"But if he doesn't know, he probably doesn't see it as a real date, just doing it for me and Lily, right?" the messy-haired teen continued, ignoring his friend.

"Yeah…"

"But then he's completely clueless!" he reprimanded. "He might not even like you that way, you know."

"… Which is exactly why he will _remain_ clueless until I say it's fine that you tell him", Sirius confirmed, now a strict tone adding to his voice. "Which I will never do, because if it'd come down to that at some point, I'd want to tell him myself. So, you are in no way becoming Rem or Lily's telltale on this, otherwise I'll unfortunately have to hex your balls off, okay?" he added threatening, though smiling slightly as this was actually sort of an everyday-custom around the quartet.

"Fine. I'm just saying…"

"Ah, Jamsie-boy, you never learn just to keep your mouth shut, do you?" Sirius teased, wanting nothing more than to just be done with this before they would actually be late.

"Prick."

"Twat."

"Ouch."

"I know, it hurts, doesn't it?" Sirius mocked, feigning heartache. "Now I'd think that a nice thank-you is in order; after all, I _did_ manage what you've tried to achieve for years."

"And I should probably be very worried as to how you did it, Sirius", James laughed, fully serious about his words though. "But, well… Thanks mate. I really appreciate it."

"Good", Sirius said, then pulling himself above the surface of their own little world just to add: "D'you reckon there'll be any food left for us now that Peter has had more than a five minute head start?"

James laughed, and they both started walking down the stairs, the stag spelling his hair completely dry while doing so.

Though once they'd reached the common room they slowed down in surprise upon seeing Remus stand just inside of the portrait hole.

"Moony!" Sirius stated – secretly quite worried that Remus would've been able to overhear parts of their conversation, even if he knew it wasn't like him to eavesdrop. "What in Merlin's balls' name are you doing here?"

"Well, as stupid as it was I figured I wasn't hungry enough not to be able to wait for you two", he explained with a soft sigh. "Peter was, though, so I sent him along, but it turned out I should've gone with him – really guys, to be so quick at the quidditch field, you're incredibly slow in the bathroom!"

"Hey, no fair Moons!" Sirius protested loudly. "You know I was done already when you left – or were supposed to have left, that is."

"Which was why I thought you'd be down soon enough anyway", Remus explained patiently as they started walking towards the Great Hall. "What could you guys possibly have done to take that long to come down?"

"I was just explaining the deal to our Jamsie", Sirius informed loud enough for James to hear and understand that he should increase his pace.

"All of it?" Remus wondered in a low voice, quite clearly taken aback with surprise.

"Nah… as much as I dared to", Sirius said truthfully. "After all, we wouldn't want him to go gossip to Lily once they get together, would we?" he added, creating quite false indications of what he hadn't told James.

He thought it'd be best if Remus believed James didn't know that it was all fake – which it really wasn't, but Remus was clearly under that impression, so that was the way Sirius would keep it.

"But didn't he know already?" Remus wondered slightly confused.

"No, I figured it would only make him an intolerable, anxious idiot if I told him before everything was set", Sirius explained in what seemed to be a very logical line of reasoning; "he would probably be all on edge and try to match you up with anyone he saw just to make sure he'd get his precious date."

Remus nodded understandingly – which made Sirius' chest pang with guilt of misusing the trust the brunette put to him – and the boys quieted down as they entered the Great Hall.

They were about to take their seats when Remus noticed Lily sitting a couple of metres away from their regular spot at the middle of the gryffindor table, and he came to a halt – as did the other two, automatically – when having reached her.

He looked at Sirius hesitantly; inquiring, and the animagus nodded. He wasn't really ready to let Lily know of Remus' "date" quite yet – he hadn't gotten the time to set Peter up with that hufflepuff yet – but he couldn't very well find yet another excuse to drag Remus away from Lily again. Besides, Peter was probably seated far enough away at their regular spot not to hear anything, and so he wouldn't make a fuss about them leaving him alone on the Hogsmeade trip (thereby busting Sirius' whole plan and letting all the effort he'd put into this to go to waste just like that).

"Hey Evans", Sirius said to attract the redheaded witch's attention, swiftly – albeit not as discreet as he'd hoped, as Remus reddened violently – sliding a hand around the werewolf's waist as she turned around to face them.

Lily, too, immediately noticed Sirius' hand and her eyes widened in surprise – though he couldn't yet distinguish any trace of disgust or even confusion as she stared at them; he might have been judging her slightly too hard, to be fair.

Remus blushed again and cleared his throat nervously – Sirius couldn't help but think how darn right adorable he looked right in that instant, but another damn ping of guilt came across him as he took in how uncomfortable Remus seemed behind the mask he'd tried to bring forward to his best of effort – before opening his mouth.

"Lily, I thought you should know that I'll be taking Sirius to Hogsmeade this weekend", he said in a barely audible whisper as to not give the secret away to anyone else than the one he intended to.

James had been standing silently as a well-behaved puppy during this circle of events, but now he simply couldn't hide his triumph anymore – which fitted Sirius perfectly as it made it look more like James had been the one to achieve this result in a matter of hours.

"A double date it is, then!" he beamed happily, though he tried to keep his voice down.

Lily gaped at them, but then a smile steadily started to grow on her lips and she actually seemed genuinely happy at the information she'd received. Maybe she wasn't all that bad after all, Sirius thought with some satisfaction.

"Really?" she asked, and looked extra long at James while on the alert for any objections. "That's great!" she added when no one seemed to have anything to interject.

She shot James another glance – looked at him for much longer than she'd ever done before, and almost seemed to be _proud_ of him – much to James' confusion and thrill.

"Okay, then", she nodded as she noticed how Sirius seemed eager to get away (so that nothing more would be said – or _given_ _away_). "This Saturday it is."

Sirius smiled triumphantly as they sat down to join Peter the few minutes they had left before they'd had to get to class. Three steps out of four on the preparation-ladder were completed, and he almost hadn't had time to feel bad about lying to so many people yet.

* * *

So what do you think? Worth waiting for? Am I dragging things out too much, or are you happy with the details? Make sure ta lemme know!

I also wanna say thank you to all my wonderful reviewers! Especially the ones reviewing the latest chapter, throwing lots of precious ideas my way. You guys are gold to me (and hopefully some of you will take up reading this chapter again even though I made you wait so long! Again, sorry about that - my vaca would've been so much better with accses to internet!)


	6. Step four

So sorry for the delay, everyone! I know, I know; I've been home for a week now, and I've only managed to produce ONE chapter! ... Up until now, that is. And even if Pettigrew aren't familliar with "muggle expressions", you do know what they say: Better late than never. Right?

... Anyway, enjoy, and don't forget to drop me a little something to keep my motivation up!

* * *

**5. ****Step four**

As it came down to it, it turned out that the thing he had _real_ problems with was setting Peter up with Marlene.

The thing wasn't that he never got an opportunity to do so, because honestly, he got plenty of them. Once, for example, Peter had wanted to head for the kitchens during their lunch break while James had wanted to waste no time in looking for the mysterious Chamber of Secrets – his determination to map all of the entire castle's secrets was almost on the verge of turning into a sick obsession. And so it had happened that Remus had so kindly offered his assistance to James, so that Sirius would be able to go along with Peter.

Of course Padfoot immediately got an idea. He snuck the map with him and looked for Marlene Simmons' dot while they were in the hallways. Luckily he found she wasn't in her common room or in the Great Hall having lunch like most of the other students, but was wandering alone through a corridor one floor down, probably on her way to the library.

Sirius grabbed Peter by the wrist and pulled him downstairs in the direction of the girl.

"This isn't the way to the kitchens, Sirius", the chubby boy said stupidly, and Sirius rolled his eyes without stopping in his tracks.

"I want to take another way. You know the thing they say about variety", he explained, much to Wormtail's confusion (and not solely because of the fact that he did _not_ know what 'they' said). However, as they'd caught up with Marlene almost outside of the library, Peter had gotten other things on his mind.

"Hey Pete", Sirius said, purposely loud enough for the witch in front of them to hear, "isn't that the girl you always speak so fondly of?"

Marlene, having thought she was alone in the corridor, glanced over her shoulder at them, met Peter's eyes, and took on the sharp red facial colour that he already had. Sirius smiled – a fake mixture of apologetic and suggestive, as if he hadn't expected her to overhear them.

"That's Marlene Simmons", Peter said in a hushed and very uncooperative voice, understandably embarrassed by what had been said and in no mood of confessing anything to neither Marlene nor Sirius right now.

"Well, why don't you go talk to her?" Sirius had said with a wink in his normal tone, pushing him persistently, not even bothering not to make it obvious.

The girl in question had already continued walking, but slowed down a bit at these fully audible words; apparently quite curious on what the two boys – or at least one of them – planned to do next.

This was one of those rare occasions when Peter actually looked as if he just wanted to shove Sirius down the toilet and flush for his total inability at being subtle, but he knew what to prioritize and therefore hurried to pull both himself and Sirius away from the scene surprisingly quickly and without another word, efficiently throwing spanners in Sirius' work.

These incidents continued to take place, pretty much with the same entry (when Sirius "accidentally" found himself and Peter in the same place as the hufflepuff girl, and tried to push them in the right direction by opening up a conversation) and the same abrupt ending (when Peter practically ran off after about 30 seconds, blushing heavily), but Sirius never got the proper result – or even _any_ progress at all – out of it.

And the thing that bugged him mostly was that it was so very obvious that the two held an interest for each other – Marlene's interest must be of strength way beyond Sirius' comprehension, seeing as she put up with the retreating figure of the supposed gryffindor time and time again – and they really wouldn't need a matchmaker if the situation had been any different, but Peter's bloody cowardice kept coming in the way.

So when two days had come and gone and Saturday grew closer and closer, Sirius got fed up and decided to change into a more forceful technique. At breakfast Friday morning he rose determinedly from his seat – receiving various glances of curiosity and confusion from his friends as he had barely touched his scrambled eggs yet – and grabbed Peter by the wrist and yanked him up only to stride over to the hufflepuff table, not stopping until he reached Marlene's seat. Then he promptly prodded her in the side to gain her attention and made her turn around, her face shining with utter confusion. Then he spoke.

"You. Him. Hogsmeade, this Saturday", he said demandingly, and none of them dare to open their mouths to protest. Though Peter actually mustered up the courage to meet the girl's eyes, and they smiled shyly at each other – of course blushing as they did so – and just like that Sirius knew that his work here was done, and that he could probably be safe leaving Pete here without him making some stupid comment to bust him (honestly, Wormy had turned out to be much bigger a threat for Sirius than either of them had expected).

But all that remained now was to carry out the actual point of the entire plan. Sirius had had to stress through preparations and watch out on the alert to be able to prevent his friends – and Lily – from talking too much about the upcoming weekend; afraid they would come to discuss certain details that neither knew the exact right version of (and actually going as far as to _discreetly_ push Remus into a deserted classroom just to prevent him from running into the redhead).

But it had been worth it. Now he could practically sit back and relax; be exited about what was to come in the good, hopeful way; let his eyes rest on Remus all he wanted, and no one – none that mattered, anyway – would think it weird.

"What was that all about, Pads?" James asked with an eyebrow raised curiously at him as soon as he'd taken his seat again.

… Perhaps now just wasn't the time to relax yet. Sirius mirrored his best mate's expression as he met his gaze confidently (oh well, he _seemed_ to be confident, either way).

"Why the curiosity, Prongs?" he wondered in his fake-polite, half-mocking tone "You can't possibly be telling me that you want to know but still didn't bother to eavesdrop, can you?"

James was about to open his mouth to reply, but Remus beat him to it.

"He didn't get the time to utter the right spell for it", the werewolf explained so very calmly and truthfully. "By the time he pulled his wand out you were already done conversing, and it seemed Peter hadn't anything sensible to add to whatever in the world you were saying."

"Is that so?" Sirius said with a bare nod. He honestly didn't care much for the explanation in itself; he was only glad Remus apparently wasn't particularly curious himself and paid much more attention to the various, ever-changing shapes of Moony's lips as the boy spoke in his usual serene matter.

He was in fact so engulfed in his studies that he didn't even notice how Remus arched his own eyebrow once he'd stopped talking, waiting in anticipation for the black-haired dog to explain his unusual silence (not to mention how the small, tricky smile that started to find its way over the boy's lips would also be slightly confounding for the brunette as it seemed Sirius was deep in thought).

He did react however, when Remus – face now taking on an increasingly puzzled look – opened his precious mouth again to say his name.

"Sirius?" Sweet Merlin, that could have him entertained for hours… though, wait a second… when Moony would say his name like that there was usually something he wanted. "What are you staring at?"

Poof! Just like that he was brought back to reality. That didn't keep his smile from widening into a teasing smirk though.

"Why, you of course", he answered honestly and – for once – utterly unashamed. "Or am I not permitted that privilege yet?"

Just as he'd hoped, Remus blushed at the comment – a faint blush of course, and that would be merely because he was good enough a friend to play along, but in Sirius' opinion it still counted! – and lowered his gaze quickly, muttering some incoherent response at the table then biting his lower lip.

… And swoosh! Just like that Sirius was plunged back deep into his own world, his thoughts now centring not only around Moony's lips, but his teeth as well. Gosh, he could stare at that for an entire day!

His pupils dilated, but he wouldn't notice if someone around him took any notice of this right now – and honestly, what harm could it make if it turned out James or Evans were watching him?

x-x-x

"What's up, Rem?" Sirius asked as they were all seated in their dormitory later that day (and by all he meant the entire quartet except for Peter, luckily). "You seem… concerned", he added attentively.

Remus met his eyes and shoved it off within seconds, shrugging and plastering a smile on his face – which would've been dazzlingly convincing if Sirius hadn't been paying extra attention to the werewolf for the past couple of… months.

"It's nothing, just lost in thought really", Remus did his very best to assure him (and Remus' very best was sure as hell not bad at all; it was dangerously distracting to Sirius to see that perfectly considered, mild smile of his along with the eyes showing the tiniest traces of skilful hesitation… Man, Moony was without a doubt one of the best actors he'd met – perhaps even better than Sirius himself, he just didn't show off about it, which made him even better).

"I guess I'm just nervous about tomorrow", Rem continued before averting his eyes and – dear God, not again! – biting his lip. Sirius had to put up a real fight to avoid both shivers and moans while contemplating his friend's words.

He shot James a brief glance and found that the boy in question gave him a very knowing glance with the raised eyebrow and everything. Sirius shrugged it off.

"Is that so?" he asked the lycan. "Well, you shouldn't worry about it. I'm nervous too", he added and put a hand over Remus' own in a supportive manner (and as he had his back against James he missed the stag's roll of his eyes).

Sirius got the sharpest ping of bad conscience yet as he looked the wolf straight in the eyes and saw real emotions slowly but steadily seeping through. It turned out the hesitation was for real, and he felt awful about it. But surely, if the brunette _really_ didn't want to do this, he would've said something… wouldn't he?

"Look, Rem", he said in a much lower voice than half a minute ago, hoping James would be tactful enough to at least _pretend_ he wasn't listening. "If you don't feel like doing this…"

Remus knew this would be his last way out of it without having to risk his friend to discover what he really felt for him. He knew this was the time to say thank you and back out of it, but beside the fact that he didn't want to cancel everything between James and Lily too, he would be downright lying if he told Sirius he didn't want to go out with him. Just because he wanted something more _real_ for a first date, he couldn't bare to lie to the grey-eyed animagus like that and probably make sure he'd never get another chance with him ever again. He couldn't just take his word back as if he was _leaving_ him – which he was fully aware of that he couldn't technically do even if he'd like to; because in order to leave someone you have got to have been together with that person to begin with, and it wasn't like he would ever get anything closer to that than this.

All of these feelings combined were what made him interrupt the other Marauder before he'd even finished his sentence.

"No", he hurriedly said with a shake of his head in confirmation. "No, I want to." He licked his lips. "I wouldn't have told you yes to begin with if I didn't want to." He swallowed. That was the closest to a confession he'd ever got to Sirius, and he wondered with fear and hope combined if said boy would notice the honesty in his words.

"Are you _sure_?" the black-haired asked, stressing the last word with a glance over his shoulder at James. "Because we could do it another time if…"

Remus laughed lightly at the empty words in his friend's last, unfinished sentence. And he shook his head once more.

"It's fine, Sirius", he assured, sounding more confident of that himself now. "We're going this Saturday as planned." After all, he'd have to screw up majorly not to be able to wave it off on the 'I-am-merely-acting-to-fool-James-and-Lily'-excuse.

Come to think of it, he was surprised at how very quiet James had been throughout this conversation, when he doubtlessly heard they were discussing whether or not to go through with the dating plans that involved him and his precious, beloved treasure as well. Perhaps he'd just matured…

* * *

Sooo... Did you like it? Even though I possibly torture you as I keep postsponing the date? Well, bare with me guys, 'cause I do think you'll find next chapter quite good;)

Anyway, suggestion on what I'll write furthermore are still welcome and precious to me! But even if you don't have any, feel free to just tell me what you liked/didn't like about this chapter or the story so far. Reviews make me smile! :D


	7. The Date

Sorry for putting you guys on hold... again! But I've worked a lot with this chapter trying to make it as good as possible - and considering I haven't written a dating installment before it took me a lot of time to realize what would be good enough/likely to happen and such - but hopefully you'll think it's okay... And it happened to turn out almost trice as long as my usual chapter's-lenght... how about that!

Also, I would like to say special thanks to people who gave me ideas and actually made this chapter happen. They would be **.X3** and **dwells-in-the-night** mostly, so BIG thank-you to you guys, though I was also inspired from certain other reviews and requests, so hopefully I've managed to mix it all into a sallad I hope most of you are gonna be content with...

So without further ado I present you with...

* * *

**6. The Date**

Sirius was currently seated along with the rest of the Marauders in a circle on the floor of their dorm. James had begun this little "consult meeting" a while ago, kind of torn up since he started doubting his own marauder-ish abilities; he still hadn't found that darn Chamber of Secrets, and thought something needed to be done about it. Remus was currently comforting the stag by pointing out that it was probably just an empty legend of no value.

But Sirius thoughts were far away from there. Well, not too far on second thought. After all, the date was tomorrow. If he'd go to bed and fall asleep early, it would be Saturday morning in next to no time.

But he was in no mood for going to bed right now. He would much rather sit up and make himself even more excited; so excited that he would perhaps – hopefully – be able to rub some of it off on his cavalier. Besides, he had the feeling that he was missing something important, something he should already have thought of…

He looked at the hazel-eyed teen in question, and he met his gaze after a moment. Remus' eyes were as calm as ever at first, but half a second later, upon realizing Sirius had been ogling him, his pupils seemed to dilate and he got something in his eyes – a special glint that Sirius had never seen before – that made the animagus feel hope for the tiniest moment of time; hope that Remus could actually feel something more than friendly for him; hopes that he too would enjoy the date for real.

And during this very short moment, Sirius came to think of something Evans had said before, while she had been under the impression she was talking to forgetful, scatterbrained James: _"He doesn't want a bloody _girlfriend_."_ ... Yet she had then seemed as if she knew Remus liked someone. And when Remus had declared to her that he would be dating Sirius... sure, she'd seemed surprised, but also very happy straight away. Almost as if she had been hoping – expecting – this to happen, merely surprised over the fact that it had happened so very suddenly. Could that mean...?

He took a peek out of his mental reasoning only to find that Remus was now quite bluntly staring at him in a very unsubtle, un-Remus-y way.

"Moony?" he asked in what wasn't much more than a whisper.

"Took you long enough to realise it, you mangy mutt", Remus said in a husky tone of voice which was, too, very out of character for him.

Sirius was hit with the realisation that he must have been voicing his thoughts out loud but didn't care much about it, because in the next very moment Remus leaned right into and across the circle to be down on all fours right in front of Sirius' face, much like one of those impulses Sirius himself often got when the two of them were on the floor together.

None of the two boys could care less of the gawking expressions of their friends' right now (it was none of their business, and surely at least one of them were bound to pass out very soon anyway), as Remus leaned in and snuck a hand behind Sirius' neck to be able to pull him even closer before their lips crashed together.

The kiss was exactly what he'd been imagining. Hot, breath-taking, mind-blowing, pulse-raging and fucking incredible! Their tongues entangled and fought for dominance, explored each others' mouths as if they had never done anything else.

"Sirius", Remus sounded in a low voice, and he made a muffled response, too busy sucking the wolf's neck to bother attempting proper language.

Sirius couldn't believe his luck; could hardly believe that this was even happening for real. After all, this was quite like something that only happened in his own very imaginative head...

"Pads?" Okay, when James said his name like that it didn't by far sound even half as sexy. "Padfoot!" Damn it! You'd think the guy would give you a break when he so clearly saw that Sirius was occupied snogging Remus senseless!

"Sirius..." Ah, back to Remus. "... Wake up."

He grunted as he did what the voice of Remus Lupin told him to most unwillingly. Great! He knew he'd been dreaming of something very pleasant, but it was slipping away from him very fast, merely leaving him with a morning problem. Ah, sweet Merlin, it almost hurt for crying out loud!

He opened his eyes and the annoyance that had been in them during the few couple of seconds he'd been awake disappeared immediately as the first thing he laid his eyes on turned out to be the very familiar pair of hypnotic hazels greeting him.

"Good morning, Sirius", said the welcome voice which seemed so much clearer now, though he still kept it low.

"Yeah, I guess it is", Sirius smiled half-groggily as he stifled a yawn. "Lucky you were the one standing closest to me, or else I might have had Prong's face mere inches from my own right now", he added, casting a glimpse at the black-haired boy next to his Moony.

"Are you suggesting that wouldn't be unbelievably pleasant to everyone?" James hurried to ask with mocking sharpness in his voice.

"I'm not _suggesting_ anything, Prongs, I'm simply telling you", Sirius teased grinning. "It isn't so very nice to hear your voice all randomly and disturbingly in the middle of one's dream, let alone to wake up to you."

"Oh, but Moony's voice you're okay with?" James asked rather pointedly, both eyebrows arched waiting for a response.

"Why of course!" he started in an overly-enthusiastic manner including hinting eyebrow-waggles, when thoughts about what little details he could remember from his dream along with the image of one now distinctly blushing Remus Lupin distracted him from continuing.

Dear God, _now_ it hurt! Sirius clenched his teeth to suppress the sharp groan that was about to rip through his throat and hurriedly swept his eyes across the room trying to focus on something that would help relieving him of his problem without him needing to do so quite literally.

He looked past James' bed and fastened his gaze at the only boy that remained sleeping – at times drooling as he did so.

"Why haven't you woken Pete up?" he asked as soon as he thought his voice wouldn't crack and betray him, and all of a sudden he remembered what day it was. "He's got a date today too, you know."

This seemed to take James with surprise. "He does?"

"Well, sure he does", Sirius replied casually as if it wasn't strange at all. "What, did you just think we'd all abandon him in Hogsmeade like that?" he continued, acting both surprised and reproachful. "And you were _fine_ with that? Tsk, tsk James, not such a good friend now…" he teased, making Remus roll his eyes in that usual fashion that was simply so _him_.

Unfortunately the mere sight of that put a stop to any imminent improvements to Sirius' _condition_ and did not help the poor bloke at all in his aim to get up without making a considerable amount of noticeable and rather obvious noises.

James wouldn't be himself if he wouldn't have noticed his friend's troubles and used them against him.

"That dream of yours must've been really fascinating, Pads", he bit back in a very suggestive manner. "Not to mention rather... eventful."

If Sirius had been able to get up and reach James without being too revealing, he would most certainly have punched his friend in the face right then and there.

"Oh, shut up you bloody twat!" he yelled, and threw his pillow straight at his spectacled, messy-haired friend, hardly daring to meet Remus' eyes in the process.

"For Merlin's sake, Padfoot, just get up already!" James exclaimed, throwing the pillow back at him. "I'm _not_ gonna be late to my first ever date with Lily just because _you_ couldn't get your sorry ass out of bed!"

x-x-x

"Sorry I'm late!" James exclaimed as soon as he saw the familiar redhead waiting at the gates already. "Sirius just wouldn't... gosh, you look positively stunning!" he continued once he'd run all the way up to her and gotten efficiently distracted by the wonderful sight of a Lily with beautifully up-done hair and – from what he could see of it – nice muggle-clothes underneath her winter cloak.

James' breath was still somewhat ragged from his sprint through the corridors after having taken a shower and eaten breakfast. When James had been sat with the other three Marauders at breakfast he had occupied himself with babbling stressed out complaints to Remus – who was the only one who would listen, while Sirius pretended to listen to Peter in order to avoid dealing with a hyperactive stag – about how worried he was of getting late and how it could be that Lily wasn't present at the table and what if it didn't go well and what if she would back out and leave him if they were late and what time was it again?

"I do hope that wasn't another one of your infamous punch lines", Lily murmured in response to James' last comment, even though she did seem quite flattered by the comment judging by the light smile playing on her lips. "And you aren't late. Neither of you are, I just happened to be early."

"Oh yeah?" Sirius had almost reached the two of them now, dragging Remus along by the wrist, pulling him closer as they came to a halt. "You just happened to be done _early_ with that kind of up-do, the carefully selected outfit and the extremely light layer of make-up you must've been very careful in applying? Geez, you must've been up by six to manage being here alrea-"

"Sirius", Remus muttered beneath his breath and indicatively gripped their now entwined hands firmer.

"All I'm saying is that even if I'm obviously done with girls now and forever, I still remember things I'd rather not, and I know the effort she's making…" By now Sirius attentively noticed that his honesty wasn't really appreciated, and decided to everyone's relief just to leave it at that. "… And I must say you've never looked better, Lily."

"Nice save, Sirius", she said dryly, flushing ever-so slightly beneath the artificial blush.

No one commented on what Sirius had said about being done with girls, all thinking different things about it though not feeling the need/having the guts/being suicidal enough to point their version of the story out.

"No, I actually mean it", Sirius persisted, apparently insistent on being as honest as possible before the date had started to compensate for the lies he would eventually have to make up or stick to if they'd get to heavier subjects. "Really, if it wouldn't be for the fact that I'm all Moony's forever, perhaps we could've..."

"Don't even go there mate", James warned half-heartedly just as Remus and Lily had both been about to step in, without being able to conceive a grin. "Just face it: you're not deadly charming to everyone."

Sirius shrugged. "As long as I am to my Moony", he smiled and snaked his arm around said boy's waist quite unsubtly.

Remus blushed, James rolled his eyes and Lily smiled a genuine smile. All of this went noticed to Sirius, but out of all three reactions Lily's was the most unexpected and – strangely enough – the one that Sirius couldn't seem to get out of his mind. There really was something in the back of his head, nagging for his attention! If only he could make out what he was supposed to remember…

"Shall we go, then?" James asked, partly just to break the silence and partly because he was really eager for his date with Lily to begin – with or without the 'supervision', but obviously he'd have to go with it.

On their way to Hogsmeade there wasn't much talking, apart from James' numerous compliments on Lily's looks, Lily's brilliancy, Lily's choice of clothes, Lily's lovely smelling perfume (_Magic_ _Date_, not that she'd ever admit it) and Lily in general. Now, Lily Evans wasn't a girl who could be bought with fawning sweet talk – she really didn't care much for it usually – but yet again she didn't exactly do much to show any discomfort at his words…

"So, where do we head first?" Lily wondered, much too eager for her own liking – if she wouldn't have been able to blame it on excitement for Remus and Sirius, that is.

"Well, as I think none of us are really up for a drink this early, we should probably save The Three Broomsticks for later, or what do you say?" James reasoned with surprising logic, maturity and politeness.

"Certainly", Lily said, quite baffled with James' very _un_-arrogant manner. "Any suggestions, then?"

"Hm… since I doubt you'd love it if your date started with a visit to Zonko's…" Sirius began with a grin.

"Oh for God's sake, we are _not_ going into that distasteful joke shop!" Lily hurried to interrupt him, dislike evident in her voice.

"_Distasteful_?" Sirius gasped much too dramatic to be taken seriously. (Oh, har har!) "Just because of that, I do believe we will have to reverse your apparent repulsion in some way or another", he stated firmly, and Lily rolled his eyes as she believed him to be joking – in contradiction to the two fellow Marauders who knew for a fact that he was serious.

"Well, that doesn't answer the question of where to go first now, does it?" Lily reminded the three guys, which made Sirius finish his earlier train of thought.

"What about Honeydukes? The place is warm, smells good and we could need to refill our stock of Chocolate Frogs, or what do you say Moons?"

Remus, along with everybody else, thought that seemed to be a good idea, and off they went.

The warmth inside the candy shop was indeed welcome to them all, especially since snow flakes started to appear outside pretty much the second they had all gone indoors. The first snowfall of the season was unusually late this far ahead in the month of December, but that certainly wasn't to say it wasn't cold outside.

Thus, the love-struck little quartet lingered in the shop for slightly longer than it took for Sirius to purchase an almost shameful amount of Sugar Quills, Exploding bonbons, Liquorice Wands and Fizzing Whizzbees, then insist to treat Remus with a whole lot of Frogs and quite a few Chocoballs as well, never mind the lycanthrope's protests.

In the meantime James had found that Honeydukes had apparently started marketing lots of Christmas sweets even before the holidays, and some samples of the more romantic kind obviously intended for Valentine's Day had already been put out in the store. They were obviously going to be a big hit two months from there, but James noticed how the section of the shelf that held them was almost empty even now, and he simply couldn't help himself but buy a small, decorative, unsuspicious looking chocolate box labelled "Sweets for my sweet", and hand it over to Lily.

Lily, on her part, simply couldn't help herself but to smile at the gesture – even if she normally would've found it very cliché and uninventive – and almost – note: _almost_ – hug James in gratitude.

But once the fascination of the shop had turned into boredom as they had all had plenty of time looking around at everything they could possibly drool over or shudder at, the four unanimously decided to exit despite the fact that it kept snowing all the more the longer they waited.

They wandered about the village kind of aimlessly – James innocently warming Lily's hands in his own while Sirius considered the fact that he had perhaps made enough 'couple-moves' on Remus already, especially as Rem was most certainly not as bound to appreciate those kind of advances as he made it look like – but once he noticed they had somehow passed Spintwitches three times, Sirius got a mischievous Marauder-impulse he simply couldn't _not_ go along with.

He bent down and – despite the fact that he foolishly enough didn't carry gloves – he shuffled up some snow from the surprisingly thick layer that had already started to cover the streets, formed it to a ball as quickly as possible, and then – before Remus even had time to open his mouth and question his actions – he aimed it at the unsuspecting victim now walking a couple of meters ahead of him.

"Hey-_iieh_!" James cried as the snowball first hit him in his neck with a soppy _splut_, then slid inside of his robes causing goose bumps to appear all over his poor body. "Damn it, Padfoot!" he exclaimed as he spun around rather energetically, completely certain that the other black-haired teenager was the perpetrator of this wicked deed. "You do realise you just proclaimed war against me?"

This, Sirius seemed to have realised quite happily before he had even put his thoughts into action. He erupted into laughter as Lily turned around to see what was going on, and took cover behind his boyfriend – ahem! _Supposed_ boyfriend, that is. He really should be more careful about getting used to these ideas… – as James formed a rather large snowball himself.

Remus cringed as James tried to aim his weapon about two inches beside his head. "Hey, don't get me involved!" he attempted to get away. "I'm just an innocent bystander."

_Splat_! The face of the innocent bystander was accidentally covered in ice-cold snow with a very fast melting-rate. Lily laughed as Sirius screamed for revenge and justice. That was, until she realised that Sirius' way of avenging _his_ date was to attack and soak _James'_. … Yes, that would be her.

_Splot_! And so they had all been dragged into a snowball fight right there in the middle of the street. Sirius felt so lucky that it wasn't windy at the time for two reasons: Firstly, it would've made them all freeze to death very quickly. Secondly, and more importantly, it would've messed with his accurate aim.

The street quickly got icy as it was trampled on, and all of a sudden in the middle of everything, Remus slipped and reached out to grab something to keep him balanced, which was why five seconds later he lay flat on his back in the snow with a surprised looking Sirius on top of him.

The two were facing each other silently and motionlessly for about five seconds more with Remus still grasping the other's collar firmly in his fist, then the surprise was wiped away from Sirius' face to be replaced with a playful and slightly mischievous smile and an inquisitively arched eyebrow as he laughed amusedly.

"Moony dearest, there really was no need to throw us both off our feet like that", he teased shamelessly. "If you've been wanting this to happen you could've just told me, and both of us would've been much warmer right now", he declared with the suggestive words and eyebrow-waggles to instantly make Remus' face burn.

He barked with laughter mostly to be able to hide the tension and need he felt at their closeness and suppress his want to close that half-an-inch distance between their faces – their noses were bumping into each other, for crying out loud! – in order to fiercely snog Remus' brains out.

However, he was fairly sure that such behaviour would not only be harmful for the kids that could very well happen to stroll over here at any time, and possibly offend some conservative village idiots, but it would also shock Remus into possible brain damage and would _probably_ give away the fact that Sirius liked him for _real_.

So for once Sirius Black didn't go with his impulses, but got to his feet instead and gave Remus a hand to do the same. He still smiled as he leaned close to his friend in order to whisper:

"We sure got'em there, Moonshine. Look at Lily's expression."

Remus looked. And Lily did indeed look all smiley, as if she'd found the cutest teddy bear ever and wanted to cuddle it closely. And she wasn't looking at James. But Remus couldn't do much more than bring a small smile to his lips as he was still catching his breath from that very unexpected – and to him desire filled – incident that he wished he'd be able to shrug off as easily as Sirius could.

"Guys, who joins me to defrost their poor fingers and toes inside The Three Broomsticks?" James asked to get the three's attention in a slight teeth-clapper, and he quickly got them all to follow him to the inn.

Unfortunately they found it to be too crowded for them to even fit inside the door – which, considering the circumstances, weren't particularly strange, really – and so they had to either reconsider their options or simply stand outside and wait for people to leave, hoping they wouldn't freeze their limbs off before that would happen.

_It would sure be nice to sit by a warm fire right now_, Sirius thought, shivering slightly. _With Remus, of course. Like that time a couple of days ago, when we were in the Common Room and I pondered how to properly ask the guy out_. He laughed to himself. Well, hadn't that gone bloody brilliant?

"We _could_ move to the Hog's Head", he suggested after about five minutes of impatient waiting.

"That scabby old place?" Lily questioned with a frown.

"It's not the most luxurious place in UK, alright…" Sirius agreed, "… but it's sure good enough to warm up and have a drink at", he thought. "After all, there's bound to be room for the four of us there, and we'll probably get more privacy there than in here."

"Actually, I think Sirius has got a point", Remus thought, earning a "thank you, love! I knew you'd agree!" from the dog in question. "It's better than just standing here, feeling one's body parts gradually go numb, isn't it?"

No one could object to that, and so they turned around and headed for the other bar.

Inside the Hog's Head there was indeed plenty of room for them, even if they had to go past Professors Slughorn and Flitwick to get to their table. It was worth it, though, and when they were about to sit down with each a butterbeer in their possession, James politely pulled out the chair for Lily, much to her appreciation.

When Sirius did the same to Remus, however, all he seemed to get was a raised eyebrow and a confused look from the other boy.

"Since when do you play the part of chivalrous knight in shining armour?" the werewolf wondered with a slightly teasing tone of voice.

"Since I play against you, Moony dearest", he replied calmly with an unembarrassed smile, making Remus shut up and sit down. Once again, Lily smiled at them.

"Where did you guys get those nicknames from anyway?" she wondered curiously as she took a sip from her beer. "I suppose I could work out where Moony and those variants come from, but I've heard the rest of you call each other all kinds of bizarre things as well", she said and paused, apparently using her high position in James' mind as an ace as she shot him a curious look and an overly nice smile. "What is it they use to call you, James?"

James looked as if he'd succumb, which was hardly surprising to the rest of them.

"Well, aside from Padfoot's various and very childish attempts at..."

"Prongs, you traitor!" Sirius interrupted immediately. "How could you ever call me childish?"

"Prongs and Padfoot, that's it", Lily stated proudly. "However, despite my many attempts, I simply can't make sense of any of them. Not Wormy either, or whatever it is that you call Peter."

"Wormtail", James was kind enough to inform her, earning a disliking glare from the dog opposite him. "What? She already knows almost everything anyway, and it's not like I've told her of our monthly escapades."

Sirius growled and Remus shook his head with a sigh as Lily's gaze grew sterner.

"What monthly escapades?" she asked demandingly, and James shot her his most charming smile to try and distract her.

"Let's not talk about that right here and now", he said, nodding towards the many adults and Hogwarts staff that surrounded them – seemingly uninterested, of course, but you never knew…

Lily shrugged, but you could tell by the determined look on her face that she would most definitely have another chat with them about this some other time.

"Guess we'd have to consider buying you a muzzle, mate", Sirius mocked him to ease the atmosphere up a bit. "You just never learn to keep your mouth shut, do you?"

"Git", James retorted quickly.

"Twat."

"Prick."

"Nonetheless, rather a prick than a twat, Prongsie-boy", Sirius said rather indicatively, which made Lily feel the need to interrupt the two of them.

"Boys, mind your language", she said, though a slight smile tugged at the corner of her lips, making her reprimanding considerably lighter and easier to wave off.

Sirius laughed and took a great swig of his drink, and James followed suit.

"Sirius!" a familiar voice reached down to the four of them, completely unexpected and out of the blue.

The black-haired Casanova nearly choked on his butterbeer at this, and didn't have to turn around to know who had just entered. Oh damn. Whatever Wormtail wanted, it couldn't be anything particularly good for others to hear, as he knew the little rat was supposed to be out on a date of his own. The hufflepuff girl surely wouldn't have ignored her date and went out with her friends instead, leaving Pete to have to look for _his_ friends… would she? Either way, Sirius was positive he didn't want to talk to the rodent right now.

"Oh, look, lucky-knut!" he exclaimed, pointed his finger at the floor and disappearing under the table the next second.

"Padfoot, what the fuck?" James said rather bemused.

"The _Cloak_, Prongs", Sirius hissed from under the table. "You're bound to have brought it with you."

"But why?" James wondered in a more normal-pitched voice.

"Just… _now_, mate!" he whispered rather urgently as he saw what he thought was Peter's feet moving from the door to get closer to the centre of the room; closer to them.

James, never one to deny his friends what he could grant them, discreetly reached a hand inside of the cloak he was wearing and used the table to cover from both Lily's and anyone else's eyes as he pulled out his invisibility cloak and gave it to his friend without anyone realising it… except possibly for Remus, who had been awfully quiet ever since Peter had walked into the picture.

Remus! Sirius realised he'd probably have to get said boy out of here as well, in case Peter would walk up and say something stupid. That was why a somewhat bewildered Remus Lupin was pulled under the table and under the invisibility cloak within the next few seconds, and of course he went with the grey-eyed Adonis as he urged him to follow him.

The two canines were on their way of getting up from their crawling position on all fours once they had gotten out from the table, and by then Peter had just about reached their table _with the hufflepuff girl accompanying him_.

"Oh", they heard the smallest Marauder say, "I thought I saw Sirius with you, James and… Lily?"

"Hello, Peter. And Marlene Simmons, right?" she added politely, and then Sirius could hear them making girl-conversations telling the other of their date while James wondered why Peter wanted to see Sirius.

"Well, as I thought he was here I just wanted to thank him for setting me up with Marlene", he replied, sounding happier than usual, and Sirius knew he should really hurry the last meters to the exit. "She's really wonderful, and if Sirius wouldn't have brought us together at breakfast two da-"

The rest of what the rat said was lost to Sirius – and hopefully to Remus too – as the door to the Hog's Head closed behind them and they were left with quiet in the empty street.

"You set Peter up with Marlene?" Remus immediately asked before they had even managed to take the cloak off of them.

"Yeah, I figured it was about time that those two got together", Sirius admitted though he carefully retouched reality a bit. "And I didn't want to hear him going on about her all the time anymore, so what does a poor seductions expert do?" he added quite dramatically.

"You do realise he'll probably talk even more about her now that they're a couple, Sirius?" Remus pointed out somewhat sceptically.

"Darn it, you're probably right, Rem! Why didn't I think of that?" he wondered out loud in his most innocent tone of voice.

The werewolf rolled his eyes. "Besides, it sounded like Peter was referring to when you pulled him away to the hufflepuff table two days ago when he talked about when you set them up", he continued quite suspiciously, "but that doesn't really make any sense at all, does it? Because back when I first agreed to go out with you, you claimed that Peter had a date arranged already then."

Sirius had already a while back realised his stupidity in saying such a thing to Remus instead of just saying "we'll work something out for him" and not have that part to worry about. ... And of course he also realised that lying to people – especially loved, kind-hearted, intelligent and extremely observant werewolves with spotless memory – was really stupid as well... He leaned at the wall when trying to win some time and Remus mimicked his movement absentmindedly.

"He didn't talk about two days ago, he said _today_, didn't you hear him?" Sirius tried to wrench himself out of it. "While you were busy dealing with James' nerves at breakfast, I advised Pete about how he should act and what he should say and do on his date. And obviously his date has gone well so far, so I suppose that was what he also wanted to thank me for."

Sirius thanked Merlin that Peter had been so busy going on and on about his upcoming date of the day, and that James had acted an absolute wreck in the meantime, craving Moony's attention. He was also lucky that Remus seemed to accept his explanation whether he believed in it or not.

"Then I have one last question left: why did you decide to pull me with you and sneak out of there?" the brunette asked confusedly.

Sirius put on a somewhat cheeky grin. "Well, that would be because I wanted to steal you away from the others, Moony my dear", he said with that indicative voice again – which made Remus go crazy even if he didn't show it – and moved closer to the other boy so that he practically had him pinned against the wall. "Or what do you reckon Lily will say when she finds us out here in this very suggestive position…?"

Just like that, the wolf had been majorly sidetracked. This was soon going to be way too much for him to handle, really, and he felt how his pulse went racing at the proximity of Sirius' body. If only James and Lily would come and "interrupt them" soon – Remus loved being alone with the other boy too much for their own good, but it was so much easier being with Sirius today when there were people surrounding them; because when there were, he could always get away with his small errors of being too obviously close to him or looking too much at him or whatever it was, simply by blaming it on the acting. This was a rather unique day he had been granted; a day when Sirius would never question if he said too much about things he usually kept to himself, or if he reacted in an odd way on body contact – after all, he was _supposed_ to be in love with the boy today.

But right now, it was still just them all alone… Well, he could at least be grateful to the fact that it started to grow darker around them already as it was winter and all, so that soon Sirius would barely be able to notice if he blushed lightly or moved very slowly. He only wished Sirius would make it easier for him and his straining self control by backing away a bit, but he couldn't very well open his mouth to say it because he was sure what would come out if he tried would be something in the straight opposite meaning.

"Remus?" Sirius all of a sudden opened his mouth to say, and now he sounded more serious (and less like himself, ironically). "Let me know if you think I act too weird for you, okay?" This was said in a barely audible whisper but because of the closeness and his lycanthropy, Remus heard him.

He couldn't answer though. What should he say? 'No, I actually only find this utterly pleasant'? Yeah, right, and then he wouldn't have to _play_ hurt when Sirius would spread the word that they weren't dating anymore, so that he'd be able to escape Remus forever. But he couldn't very well say 'Yes, I do find your behaviour disturbing and would like you to keep a meter's distance from me at all times', could he? That would be a lie, not to mention that he would hate to offend or hurt Sirius like that, plus that he would hate it if he would actually comply with that.

So he hesitated with his answer for so long that both of them seemed to be relieved when they heard the familiar voice of one Lily Evans.

"… Didn't see them leaving at all, and if they'd wait for us they ought to be freezing by now… Oh!" she turned her gaze from James to the other two boys. "… Or maybe not…" she added, and actually blushed as Sirius decided to comment on her staring – which amused him a great deal since they hadn't in fact done something for real, but barely standing there looking not-so-innocent and all.

"Care to take a picture, Evans?" he teased her. "Or would you rather join us?"

There he went again with that eyebrow-waggle of his. Lily and James both rolled their eyes at him simultaneously.

"Honestly, sometimes I don't understand what Remus sees in you, Sirius", the redhead said. "You're unbelievably immature."

Sirius shrugged. "Who doesn't love that about me? I bet even you do, you just won't admit it to yourself."

Another eye-roll. Sirius wondered if it was Remus' behaviour that had been so contagious to her.

"You may have to consider the idea that even if Remus loves you, that doesn't mean everyone else does." She could've just ended it with 'Remus loves you' for all the difference it made in Sirius' mind. He considered _that_ idea alright, and found it _very_ intriguing; so intriguing that he got lost in thought and didn't even notice how Remus' whole body stiffened next to him. "Speaking of which, how in the world did you guys realise you were both in love with each other?"

Lily was particularly curious of this and had pondered the question ever since she was told they would go on this date – especially since she had tried to convince Remus that Sirius was in fact in love with him ever since she discovered the werewolf's love for the hopeless scallywag.

Sirius felt like he should take the directive of answering her question, so that Remus would have plenty of time making some believable story up while he could actually just tell the truth and none would be the wiser.

"Well, for me it was actually not dramatic at all", he thus said, and at his words everyone thought of how unrealistic that seemed for Sirius, the drama-queen – ahem, _king_ – personified. "Guess I kinda realised it when I couldn't close my eyes to it any longer, I mean… don't get me wrong, I wasn't in denial or something but I was just… oblivious", he explained, and gave a bit of extra thought to it since he hadn't actually thought particularly much about it. "We'd always been close, right Moonshine? I had never even imagined life without him. But after a certain incident in which I had acted like a total ass…"

"Don't you always?" Lily interjected with certain softness around her usually sharp voice, letting them know she was joking and did in fact listen to what was said.

"… The point is", Sirius continued with a look of feign annoyance at the interruption, "after that I had to face that I might lose him for real…"

"You wouldn't have. I forgave you", Remus felt the need to interpose, as he had gotten unexpectedly carried away with Sirius' words – they did touch many soft and sensitive spots, he had to admit. Sirius was really skilled.

"You did, Rem", the black-haired dog said, smiling softly at him with a look of true fondness in his eyes which almost caused the wolf to lose his balance. "You did, so quickly I hardly dared to believe it, in fact. I guess that's just another thing I love about you."

Remus could get used to this. Definitely. And it was so wrong because the words didn't hold the meaning of which they were made out to. He had to gulp several times to avoid saying or showing how badly he wanted them to be real.

"Anyway, I hated the thought of losing him", he continued explaining to the curious redhead. "And even after I had been forgiven… by Remus, that is… I guess I grew more protective of him. Somewhere in the middle of all this I realised how much I'd do for him… and that I loved you." He said the last part directed to Remus himself. After all, this was a wonderful day in which he was _supposed_ to be in love with the lycan; truly, madly, deeply in love. "More than I should, really. But it has gone great so far, so…" he trailed off. Admittedly he supposed it could've gone greater. But, oh well, one step at a time, right?

Remus inwardly snorted. Yes indeed, look at how absolutely splendid things had gone! Just look at the fact that Sirius had no idea that he liked him for real, and judge for yourself of the greatness of their love.

Not that he was bitter or anything. He had Sirius as a friend and that was by far more than he had ever expected upon arriving to Hogwarts; so much more than he deserved, and that should be enough… Should be…

He almost flinched as Sirius' fingers gently wrapped around his own, pulling him out of his own thoughts and back to reality and expectant gazes.

"Oh", he said as he realised they ought to be waiting for him to tell them his part of the story. "… Well, my version isn't quite as good as yours, Sirius. I, for one, _was_ in denial." He shot Lily a meaning glance, and that was that.

Sirius was surprised at how Lily seemed to let it go just like that, without hearing any details. Once again it felt like it was something he missed about her, like she knew something about Remus that no one else did. But that couldn't be, because she obviously didn't know that this was all a fake. … Did she?

For the first time Sirius considered the possibility that he had perhaps overestimated his own cleverness. What if Lily had in fact realised it was a scam already, simply deciding to go along with it because… Yeah, why? To get a couple of laughs on Sirius' behalf? That didn't seem like her, from what he had started to learn about the girl who was obviously more than simply a law-abiding prefect and the teacher's pet.

A gust of cold air interrupted all the thoughts Sirius had had time to think during the latest few seconds, and Lily shivered visibly, awaking Prongs from his apparent slumber enough for him to put an arm around her – and apparently Lily was actually cold enough as to lean in to the touch rather than to jinx the arm off him.

"What do you say we head back to the castle and a warm fire?" James suggested to all of them, and the green-eyed witch seemed quite keen on the idea. "We've been around pretty much everywhere anyway, and it's getting dark."

Sirius would be willing to bet that all four of them knew James really wouldn't mind the darkness himself, though he supposed it seemed a decent thing to say, even if he doubted James had any plans of actually _ending_ the date just because they went back to the castle.

"You're saying that you back out on Zonko's?" he mocked in fake-agitation. "Are you no longer bothering filling up our joke supplies? Do you leave me here, alone and miserab-?"

"You're included in the 'we', and therefore free to come with us, you know", James clarified with a roll of his eyes. Really, why does everyone keep imitating his Moony as soon as they want to seem responsible? "And even if you don't, you won't be alone, because then I'm guessing Moony will stay with you. And you didn't seem to be so very miserable being alone with him a couple of minutes ago", he pointed out, even if he probably didn't draw exactly the same conclusions as Lily about what he and Remus had been doing – he pretty much nailed it regardless of what he believed. "Besides, our supplies hardly need another refill, Pads", he added with his usual, joking voice and a wink… which he perhaps shouldn't have done so very straight-forwardly right in front of Lily.

"So you're not coming, then?" Lily wondered, considerately choosing to ignore the last comment of James'.

Sirius really wouldn't have had anything against heading for their comfortable common room, cosily warming up in front of a crackling fire in the couch or on the floor – his doggy instincts made him feel quite at home and comfortable on the floor as well – admiring the way the light played with Remus' hair _openly_ this time…

It was just that he suspected Remus was quite fed up with this entire act – not that the lovely werewolf would ever choose to phrase himself like that – and would like to take a break from it, which he wouldn't be able to do in James and Lily's presence.

Sirius felt quite bad about himself now as well. It must have been such an over-whelming day to his – well, not technically _his_, he knew that! – poor Moony. After all, when he'd agreed to "go out" with him, it had been on the term of them not having to do 'a whole lot of obvious couple-things', and really, he thought, it took just about someone with Remus' incredible strength, heart and self-control to be able to go through with this for a day like the brunette had. That was three more things he loved about the boy, by the way.

So, basically, he said no to Lily's request, with the explanation of him having too much energy left for the day to sit down and relax yet.

"But you two go ahead", he said politely, then in a not quite as polite manner he added: "Just don't keep her up too late, Prongs. She's cranky when tired."

Lily frowned at his words but kept her head up high as she was to say goodbye to the dog and his werewolf.

"Do you know what, Sirius?" she said right before she turned to walk away with James. "You're actually not as bad as I thought you were."

Well, that was… sort of nice. Too bad then, that she had said that while unaware of the fact that he was a bloody cowardly liar. Things would've been so much better if this had all been for _real_; a real date, with no lies, no hiding; Remus having real feelings towards him.

Not that he was bitter or anything. He had Remus as a friend, and surely two friends could stargaze together all alone as they walked about in no particular direction in deserted streets to stay warm (after finishing the best date in Sirius' life). Could they not?

* * *

Sorry if it was too long, I actually tried to part the chapter into two pieces but it just wouldn't work with me :/ And also because this is extra long I admit that I haven't thoroughly checked my grammar, but hopefully you weren't too bugged about it... Also it hit me that some of you might be confused as to how the whole thing _seemed_ to go _unbelievably_ well to Sirius and no one suspected _a thing_ about it... Well, all I can say is hit me with ideas, and do take notice of how I wrote a lot in italic *wink wink*

Now I would very much like for you to review and tell me what you think about it, because as you might have noticed I do tend to try and listen to any feedback/idea and keep it in mind for future improvement (and since this was new to me I guess it would be kinda nice to hear that it didn't suck _too_ bad ;p ).


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